Contents

Architectural History is more than just the study of buildings. Architecture of the past and the present remains an essential emblem of a distinctive social system and set of cultural values, and as a result it has been the subject of study of a variety of disciplines.

‘Architecture’ may at first appear to be a more fixed and finite term. It has a threedimensional, tangible, useable form. But questions remain about what can be considered architecture and what cannot, and by this I mean that we usually understand architecture to incorporate aesthetic as well as functional consideration into its structure. Anything that does not fall into this category can be described as ‘just a building’. This may seem too simple. Can architecture be determined solely by the use of refined architectural style – high or polite architecture instead of vernacular?

Architecture differs from a work of art, which can be displayed in different settings and the subject-matter, form and meaning will remain unchanged. The physicality of any built structure can be altered over time as additions and alterations are made. Moreover, a building or work of architecture can change its function as it meets the different demands of its occupants, although its exterior appearance may be unaltered. And its meaning may change depending on the nature of the context. This reveals some of the problems of interpreting historic architecture from a modern-day perspective as the physical changes and different cultural contexts transform the object.

When, in architecture, one uses a fixed unit and combinations of it, to produce harmony, the effect should be most striking and apparent... as it is in music by the measured beat and in poetry by the cadence and rhythm.

Ernest Flagg, Small Houses: Their Economic Design and Construction (1922)

[Makes a good architect] an open mind, energy, an appetite for hard work, a willingness to explore new solutions and push boundaries. A sense of humor is also helpful.

Dancing and architecture are the two primary and essential arts. The art of dancing stands at the source of all the arts that express themselves first in the human person. The art of building, or architecture, is the beginning of all the arts that lie outside the person; and in the end they unite.

Architects know that some kinds of design problems are more personal than others. One of the cleanest, most abstract design problems is designing bridges. There your job is largely a matter of spanning a given distance with the least material. The other end of the spectrum is designing chairs. Chair designers have to spend their time thinking about human butts.

Architecture worth great attention. As we double our numbers every 20 years we must double our houses. Besides we build of such perishable materials that one half of our houses must be rebuilt in every space of 20 years. So that in that term, houses are to be built for three fourths of our inhabitants. It is then among the most important arts: and it is desireable to introduce taste into an art which shews so much.

Thirty spokes converge upon a single hubIt is the hole in the centre that the purpose of the axle depends.We make a vessel from a lump of clayIt is the empty space within the vessel that makes it useful.We make doors and windows for a room.But it is the those empty spaces that make the room habitable.Thus while the tangible has advantagesIt is the intangible that makes it useful.

A spider conducts operations that resemble those of a weaver, and a bee puts to shame many an architect in the construction of her cells. But what distinguishes the worst architect from the best of bees is this, that the architect raises his structure in imagination before he erects it in reality

The hasty multitudeAdmiring enter'd, and the work some praise,And some the architect: his hand was knownIn heaven by many a tower'd structure high, Where scepter'd angels held their residence,And sat as princes.

The modern age has in most cases failed with the rebuilding of old cities destroyed in the war and shown itself incapable of recreating the complex grain of places which took centuries to evolve. Clearly our modern architectural vocabulary just isn't up to the job.

An architect, to be a true exponent of his time, must possess first, last and always the sympathy, the intuition of a poet … this is the one real, vital principle that survives through all places and all times.

Louis Sullivan, '"Emotional Architecture as Compared to Intellectual : A Study in Subjective and Objective", an address to the American Institute of Architects (October 1894) (in a misprint of its first publication "Classical" appeared in the title, rather than "Intellectual") (1894)

No complete architecture has yet appeared in the history of the world because men, in this form of art alone, have obstinately sought to express themselves solely in terms either of the head or of the heart. I hold that architectural art, thus far, has failed to reach its highest development, its fullest capability of imagination, of thought and expression, because it has not yet found a way to become truly plastic: it does not yet respond to the poet's touch. That it is today the only art for which the multitudinous rhythms of outward nature, the manifold fluctuations of man's inner being have no significance, no place.

Louis Sullivan, '"Emotional Architecture as Compared to Intellectual: A Study in Subjective and Objective (1894)

The true architectural art, that art toward which I would lead you, rests, not upon scholarship but upon human powers; and, therefore, it is to be tested, not by the fruits of scholarship, but by the touch-stone of humanity.

"Conversations with Goethe in the Last Years of His Life", page 282; by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Johann Peter Eckermann, Margaret Fuller; Translated by Margaret Fuller; Publiched of Hilliard, Gray, and company, 1839; 414 pages .

Architecture has its political Use; publick Buildings being the Ornament of a Country; it establishes a Nation, draws People and Commerce; makes the People love their native Country, which Passion is the Original of all great Actions in a Common-wealth…. Architecture aims at Eternity.

Christopher Wren, "Of Architecture", Parentalia; or Memoirs of the Family of the Wrens, comp. by his son Christopher (1750, reprinted 1965), Appendix, p. 351.

And so, as they kept coming together in greater numbers into one place, finding themselves naturally gifted beyond the other animals in not being obliged to walk with faces to the ground, but upright and gazing upon the splendor of the starry firmament, and also in being able to do with ease whatever they chose with their hands and fingers, they began... to construct shelters.

There was King Bradmond's palace,Was never none richer, the story says:For all the windows and the wallsWere painted with gold, both towers and halls;Pillars and doors all were of brass;Windows of latten were set with glass;It was so rich in many wise,That it was like a paradise.

The Gothic cathedral is a blossoming in stone subdued by the insatiable demand of harmony in man. The mountain of granite blooms into an eternal flower, with the lightness and delicate finish, as well as the ærial proportions and perspective of vegetable beauty.

The hand that rounded Peter's domeAnd groined the aisles of Christian Rome,Wrought in a sad sincerity:Himself from God he could not free;He builded better than he knew;The conscious stone to beauty grew.

When I lately stood with a friend before [the cathedral of] Amiens,… he asked me how it happens that we can no longer build such piles? I replied: "Dear Alphonse, men in those days had convictions (Ueberzeugungen), we moderns have opinions (Meinungen) and it requires something more than an opinion to build a Gothic cathedral.

Heinrich Heine, Confidential Letters to August Lewald on the French Stage. Letter 9. translation. by C. G. Leland.

So that there was neither hammer nor axe nor any tool of iron heard in the house, while it was in building.

I Kings, VI. 7.

Grandeur * * * consists in form, and not in size: and to the eye of the philosopher, the curve drawn on a paper two inches long, is just as magnificent, just as symbolic of divine mysteries and melodies, as when embodied in the span of some cathedral roof.

I would have, then, our ordinary dwelling-houses built to last, and built to be lovely; as rich and full of pleasantness as may be within and without: * * * with such differences as might suit and express each man's character and occupation, and partly his history.

Therefore when we build, let us think that we build (public edifices) forever. Let it not be for present delight, nor for present use alone, let it be such work as our descendants will thank us for, and let us think, as we lay stone on stone, that a time is to come when those stones will be held sacred because our hands have touched them, and that men will say as they look upon the labor and wrought substance of them, "See! this our fathers did for us."